Yawn, yawn and, oh, yeah, yawn. SEK comes across as particularly pathetic in the latter – at least our own Matt Christie fights his own battles. On a more interesting note, does anyone know why Jodi Dean’s book doesn’t ship in paperback in Canada until January 3, 2007?
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This is the personal website of Craig McFarlane, a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Programme in Sociology at York University, Toronto and a lecturer in the Department of Law at Carleton University, Ottawa. I also contribute to The Inhumanities.
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39 Comments
Yeah, because you know how much I hate to debate stuff. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s long, protacted debates.
I mean, really, do you think so much of me that I won’t dig a trench and wage a protracted, pointless war? Because I will…just in this case, as is obvious from the context, I was a proxy defendant in a larger spat between T.V., Berube and Burke.
Your accusation baffles me. Half the time, I’m accused of being overly aggessive; the other half, I’m accused of being pathetically weak. Can you imagine a scenario in which, to paraphrase some schmuck, I do something in the right way, at the right time, to the right person, for the right reason, in the right way, &c.?
P.S. Before you accuse me of extreme vanity a la T.V., I’m subscribed to your RSS feed. I “discovered” this post because, well, because I read you regularly…
I certainly wasn’t attempting to hide it from you – afterall, it is in plain sight and not a snide comment circulating through email and, indeed, I did link to your site, something you’d eventually see even if you don’t read my site regularly. Perhaps it is Berube’s rhetorical construction that annoys me the most – both the original post and comment sixty-three: he’s “above” it all. (I find his style grating and little more than a slightly more literate and slightly more “left” Horwitz, I don’t wish physical harm upon him like others. I find it grating in the same way I find your writing grating, Scott: all these references to people who you claim to know – I can’t verify it, of course, nor am I interested in doing so – whether it is Jacques Derrida or, with Berube last week, Ian MacKaye. Plus, you, Berube and Holbo just write too much. Editors are needed in all cases!)
Right.
And, of course, the conjunction of those two posts at The Valve, Berube’s own post and your event on whatever it is (I’m not familiar with the person under discussion) just seems to be – well – timely. Berube being a symptom of the disease that is mainstream American liberalism… (Presumably exactly that which The Valve seeks to discuss this week.)
The whole LS & The Weblog vs. TV & Crooked Timber with Berube taking (im)oppurtune potshots is rapidly growing tiresome. Which was precisely my original point.
Oh, and then there’s Rich…
(I’ve likely said far too much.)
The whole LS & The Weblog vs. TV & Crooked Timber with Berube taking (im)oppurtune potshots is rapidly growing tiresome.
It was never interesting.
Well, at least we are getting to the point where, instead of feigning outrage, you can feign boredom. That’s something.
Well, I don’t read your blog John – unless someone I do read links to it, and only then a couple of sentences. I doubt that’s feigning disinterest.
I think he means me, but, as always, I’m not quite sure what he’s saying – or trying to say. (In passinge, I note I scored a triple crown tonight: a comment from each of SEK and Holbo, a comment to SEK on Berube’s by Berube in reference to me [very clever: 'radical theoria brigade' - insofar as someone who lives in the eighteenth century can be radical today...] and, best of all, Berube spent fifty-one minutes reloading my site tonight.)
Yes, because I reserve my snide comments for email…
Well, I do write about the people I work with, but nowhere near so much as I did before I realized that it was haughty and annoying.
If by “timely” you mean “paranoid,” then yes, it was timely. Turns out, though, that Michaels book event we’ve been planning for months happened to coincide with T.V.’s decision to revisit Old/New Left Debates O’ Yore. Not my fault.
All in all, then, you’ve made a patently false claim about my unwillingness to defend myself and backed it up with a contention–admittedly based on ignorance–that T.V. coordinated his attack on Burke and Berube on my site to correspond with a book event he’d despise and we’ve been planning for months all because it seems too convenient?
Alright then, I foresee rational conversation in our futre…
Dude, seriously, I like most of what you write, which is why I’ve subscribed to your feed. This idea that having me comment is some kind of moral victory is kind of silly. I don’t comment much of anywhere anymore…but if you start throwing out my initials and making baseless accusations, you know I won’t be able to resist.
I didn’t say you were feigning disinterest. I said you were feigning boredom.
Scott, I note your first comment (#7) has little to do with the discussion consisting, primarily, of wild leaps of logic. Regarding your other comment (#8), please do keep reading – I like to pretend I have an audience. (I was excited to get a search from princeton.edu yesterday for “Buat-Nancay,” although I haven’t discussed him in detail, his name has appeared in lists – I hope to actually do that come the spring.)
Well, the herd mentality evidenced by this post just didn’t jibe with my earlier (mostly favorable) impression of this blog, so I read around a bit while prepping my class. Sorry about that – I didn’t mean to disturb anyone. And thanks for checking and rechecking my comments section with regard to a post that didn’t mention you! I wouldn’t have known, otherwise – I don’t check my referral stats.
One wonders how you sustain a “(mostly favorable) impression” with my position of privilege in the “radical theoria brigades.” Thought you hated the latter! I’m still disappointed, by the way, with your reading of Foucault in your two posts on Williams. But that is neither here nor now.
Craig, those “wild leaps of logic” in #7 were yours, remember:
I can’t help it if you leave them for me to explain.
The conjunction was “timely,” was it not? American liberal prattling about “Theory” just as an event on American liberalism (“diversity”) begins at The Valve, which, coincidentally, had two “Theory is bad, but Holbo is great” posts that very week. Timely in the same way that running out of gas on the traintracks is “timeless” – just as a train is approaching. Had I meant anything else, I would have said “untimely.” The leaps remain yours; i.e., imputing conspiracy thinking to me. (Of course, this conjunction is all that timely: it happens with a great deal of regularity – like the lunar cycle.)
One wonders how you sustain a “(mostly favorable) impression” with my position of privilege in the “radical theoria brigades.” Thought you hated the latter!
Not as a matter of principle, no. But I did think this post was more a pledge of allegiance than anything else, hence the “brigades” line (or, more precisely, “igadesbray”). And when I stopped by this afternoon to see how the Valve-LS metathing was coming along, I laughed out loud at the “best of all, Berube spent fifty-one minutes reloading my site tonight.” Because you’re right, that does sound funny, and the “best of all” bit is the right touch. (You’re also right that this Holbo guy writes too much. Make him stop. As for me, “slightly more literate and slightly more ‘left’ Horwitz” isn’t quite right, because I’ll never match the leftism of Early Horowitz. Oh, and I never claimed to “know” Ian MacKaye. I met him for about half an hour one afternoon in 1985 when he sang those backup vocals for my band. Of all the things for you to object to!)
Anyway, I found your June 28 and July 14 posts especially interesting. But for the record, I think Scott comes across quite well in this latest exchange, except where he’s a bit too generous to some of his more frenetic interlocutors.
How do you know I’m ‘prattling’ about Theory? (I mean: why ‘prattling’, rather than some other verb?)
Wow it looks like you guys are having so much fun. You’ve hit the flamewar paydirt, Craig. I wish I could be so lucky, I only get this kind of attention when I poke naive-libertarian hornets’ nests.
Carry on.
I find it works best when you make comments about those who are over-invested in their online lives and personae. Also, an inability to engage in self-reflection and self-critique also goes a long way. Your new friend SUZANNE might be good for a couple comments.
Hmmmm, it strikes me that these ‘they won’t engage in self-reflection and self-critique’ responses to the Valve, etc. partake in a sort of reverse early Wittgensteinian mysticism. All these criticisms have at some point apparently fallen under a rigorous ’some things can be said but never shown’ ban. And so, ‘whereof we cannot show, thereof we must make lots of little outraged-sounding noises.’
I can’t say it does a lot for me, but I’ve found I like making jokes about it.
My new “friend” SUZANNE was a one-off drive-by, or she ran off as fast as her little legs could carry her. I can’t get no satisfaction.
Wittgenstein shmittgenstein. I ain’t got none of them thar fancy book larnin’.
It’s funny, though, how both Craig and I independently converged on anything like overlapping internet circles, and how eerily common us Ottawa folks seem to be on teh internets.
Hm…Well I am largely sympathetic to Berube’s position in this meta-debate, I must say, as I was the first time I agreed with him on matters Chomsky and Hezbollah and et cetera (on Long Sunday). That he conflates Craig with John Pistelli with Long Sunday generally is perhaps just an indicator of his fidelity to Holbo; after all personal friendships are hard to match, especially with loosely woven spontaneous groupsing of virtual solidarity.
Craig’s yawning is a little heavy-handed.
Berube’s and Holbo’s put-downs in response to indifference seems heavy-handed in a different way.
But you sure are doing a lot of revisionist meta-history, John.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t see that it does you any favors (I suspect this is what Craig may have been hinting at, at least in part).
Ultimately though, when another party refuses to engage any further with someone, having decided the results in terms of mutual comprehension or good faith efforts or are simply not worth the time and effort, there is no limit to the ways their refusal can be spun. It might be better to try a different tack than the one that, in fact, puts you in the same league as politicians everywhere. Saying “but Dude, I really do like you” sadly just doesn’t seem to compensate.
I say, Look, World: witness the first stirrings of feigned whatsit John Holbo, Scott Eric Kaufman, Rich Puchalsky and Michael Berube said.
Preemptive, but very sincere apologies if any of this happens to come off any seriouser than it should.
Oh, and pledging allegiance to Long Sunday, as if such a thing could ever be possible: that is rich!
I am of course happy to accept pledges. For $20 via paypal you may even get a post on Zizek. For $50, something on Derrida.
Matt: “But you sure are doing a lot of revisionist meta-history, John.”
So you SAY. (But why should I believe you.)
John: “Well, at least we are getting to the point where, instead of feigning outrage, you can feign boredom. That’s something.”
So you SAY (about Craig, presumably). (But why should I believe you.)
I’ve read little of any of the material needed to get what’s going on here, but the Ian MacKaye ref piqued my interest cuz I heart Ian M. Can someone please point me to the post where MB talks about meeting him? Thanks.
Why should you believe me that Craig is feigning boredom, Matt? Well, you yourself write – comment 21 – that Craig’s “yawning is a little heavy handed”. A heavy-handed yawn is, as yawns go, feigned. (How else?) So you should take my word for it because you should take YOUR word for it. (Alternatively, you should take my word for it because, when you get to the point where you can’t even fool yourself into thinking you DON’T take my word for it, it’s probably time to look for a new line of work.)
This isn’t very important, of course.
I was referring to the “outrage”, John.
Not to get too technical with you, but it also clearly depends on whether you intend to signify either the strong or the weak sense of “boredom.” (As a patient reader of the late philosopher named Derrida, I’m sure you follow.)
I also find it funny that after a period of acknowledging defeat in the Theory Wars, you have returned to your old straw-manning triumphalist mantras. Neither here nor there, of course (the links to the actual history are above). Cheers.
Matt, I have no fidelity to this Holbo character. I betray him three times every day before the cock crows, and I do it with glee.
Nor do I really think there are adicalray eoriathay igadesbray at work here. That was an eremay okejay, taking off from the fact that this post consisted of nothing but yay our team, yawn their team. Yes, I should have acknowledged that Craig is one person, you’re quite another, John (P.) still another, T.V. an other of the Other, and et alia a whole bunch of plural others. But still, I do think this is (at least in part) yet another personal skirmish in the long-running smash-hit Long Sunday-Valvarama, and I also think that when I was a younger and a wiser man, I did well to keep more to myself and my own bloggy business, even (or especially) when I was invoked by one party or another.
Which is not to say that I’m planning to stop reading these things — quite the contrary. The initial discussion of symbolic politics, the New Left, and the “ew-hippies” response, eight or nine months ago on the Valve, was completely engaging at first, and I find myself returning to it this week as I deal with my own exasperation with the work of Joan Didion. Thanks for that, everyone.
Jokeology accepted.
For me, it has been a long, hot week framing houses. Our job site is about two clicks from a reserves airfield; the noise from the jets and planes is nearly constant. And today, we discovered that one of the kitchen walls wasn’t quite plumb; it required a lot of convincing from a sledgehammer. This is my line of work, should anyone be curious. For all matters philosophical I happily direct elsewhere (to Michael’s posts on Theory Tuesday, for instance, or those on symbolic politics at Long Sunday.)
Matt: “after a period of acknowledging defeat in the Theory Wars, you have returned to your old straw-manning triumphalist mantras.”
OK, I’ll bite. Do you care to explain why you see it that way? I’m genuinely curious? In exchange for an actually sincere mini-historical account I even promise not to snark, no matter what you say. I clicked on the links but, frankly, they don’t seem to bear on the question.
I clicked on the links but, frankly, they don’t seem to bear on the question.
How odd; they do for me.
Oh, man. I can’t believe this thread is still going. Craig, seriously, how do you do it?
Yes, I find it odd as well.
John,
when you get to the point where you can’t even fool yourself into thinking you agree with me…it’s time for everybody else to read the links for themselves (I don’t particularly care about convincing you – because frankly, I think you’re hopeless, and hopelessly confused).
I went back and read the links, but to this unlettered outsider, it sounds like people arguing about how many angels each has *really* claimed can dance on the head of theoretical pin. To paraphrase a…famous…anthropologist.
Not the first to say that, Mandos isn’t.
A heavy-handed yawn is, as yawns go, feigned. (How else?)
Can this be serious? It seems fairly obvious this ‘weak’ sense of “feign” is not at all what Holbo meant to imply. Or at least he profits unjustly off the ambiguity.
Feigning the performance of things does not by necessity make their sentiment any less sincere. One is often heavy-handed in order to be more direct or explicit (taking into account the various nomalizing veils and buffers of decorum, propriety or collegiality).
More direct and explicit, for better or worse.
This comment is just a gratuitous attempt to lengthen the thread. That end could also be served by someone telling me the story about MB and IM.
xo,
Nate
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